The Sound of Your Voice
by etraytin
Summary: After the end of the Santos Administration, former Chief of Staff Josh Lyman finds himself having difficulty adjusting to life outside the White House. Luckily, he has one friend who can give him some advice from experience.


Author's Note: Hey again, everybody! Today marks a very important, very auspicious occasion in my fanfic career! This is my 50th piece of fanfiction for The West Wing! Exciting! When I started writing these fics, I had no idea I was going to end up writing fifty of them, or that they would comprise more than 220,000 words in total length. Which is probably good, because that might have seemed a little daunting at the time.

To celebrate this milestone, here is a little futurefic for you, set after the end of the Santos Administration. Today's prompt was from Arytra, who asked for: "Josh and CJ seeing each other after the Santos administration and her helping him and Donna to settle down a bit the way she needed help." Hope you enjoy!

…...

February, 2015

February in California was warm and breezy, a huge change from the cold misery of Washington DC in the winter. Casa Cregg-Concannon was a modest home with a spacious lawn, and only folks who paid attention to property values in Santa Monica would realize the affluence that went into owning that comfortable space. CJ and Danny weren't house-proud types, but they had two active daughters and a yard was an absolute must for the sake of everyone's sanity. Today there was an excited quartet of children racing over the grass, watched over with greater or lesser caution by the pair of adults on the broad open porch.

"Be nice to the little ones, Jo!" CJ called to her own eldest, swinging her legs idly from the rail she was perched on. All she got was an absent wave in response, but that seemed to be enough for CJ to return her attention to the man beside her. "So how does it feel to be free?"

Josh snorted, looking into his glass of iced tea. "It feels like there's a Republican in the White House because our guy couldn't articulate a foreign policy besides 'I think there might be other countries out there somewhere.' Seriously, could you believe the primary this time? The voters are crazy."

"I've been saying that for years," CJ volleyed back laconically. "And sixteen years in a row for Democrats wasn't a bad run. You did good." She reached out and ruffled his hair, now even further receded and rapidly completing the turn to white. "But what I was really asking was how it feels for you. I know you're not all politics, no matter what you like people to think."

"Bite your tongue," he ordered without heat. "Anyway, it's fine. I've got time to fix the stuff around the house that's been driving Donna crazy for years, sort out all the papers I inherited from Leo, get back to jogging. My blood pressure's down ten points already since Inauguration. And I can spend more time with the kids. I think they might actually be starting to recognize me."

As if on cue, his head snapped up at the sound of a brief cry from his three-year-old Evelyn, but a small lawn tumble was apparently not enough for her to stop running around. "Do you think they're playing too rough?"

"They're fine," CJ told him with the airy assurance of someone who'd raised a child to the ripe old age of seven so far. "If nobody's bleeding, it's all good. No culture shock, then?"

Josh shifted in his seat. "It's not like there's much going on to get used to. Donna's still working full time, and Garret's in half-day preschool, so it's Evie and me half the day. Thank god she finally potty-trained. I'm thinking about letting her ghost-write my memoirs."

"A little writer's block?" CJ asked, laughing.

"I'm not a writer," he declared loftily. "I like to think of myself as the one who others write about."

"They've done that," she reminded him. "You weren't very happy."

"Yeah, because what they wrote was tabloid trash!" His face reddened slightly. "I know this is my chance to set the record straight before I start with whatever's next."

"But?" CJ encouraged.

"It feels weird," he admitted. "Like I spent a decade and a half on a speeding train, and I was used to it. I got married on the train, had my kids there. I knew the rhythm of everything, and then suddenly I get off the train and I'm standing on the ground, but my whole body feels like I should still be moving." He took a long drink of his iced tea. "I wake up in the morning with the same adrenaline rush as when I was chief of staff, but I've got nothing to spend it on, so it just makes me jittery. Donna's switched me to decaf."

CJ nodded. "It took me six months in California to stop waking up at 2am, absolutely sure that I'd missed hearing my alarm go off. I'd realize where I was, and what time zone I was in, and still not be able to go back to sleep. Danny was about ready to make me sleep on the couch." She laughed at the memory, funny now with enough years in front of it. "How's Donna adjusting to the change?"

"You know how she is, she's amazing. She can adapt to anything, just rolls with it and moves on." He moved his shoulders in a restless shrug. "I think she actually misses Helen more than the White House. She's already talking about how we should go on a vacation to Texas." Josh glared at his cup, giving all the indications of a serious brood coming on. "We spend more time together now, she likes that, and she likes the jogging, and she even likes the minuscule amount of writing I've actually put on the page."

"So Donna's a lot happier being out of the White House than you are," she summarized.

"Yeah, definitely," he began, then paused. "I think so. I hope so."

"You just lost a lot of steam there, mi amour," CJ observed. "You think she might not be happy?"

"Happy being out of the White House, yeah. Happy with me..." Josh set down his cup, raked his hands through his hair. "I want to be good at this, CJ," he told her earnestly. "I told myself, I told her that when we got out of the White House, things were going to be different. She put up with eight years of insane schedules and canceled dates and all-night crises, and that's after the first eight years of insanity when we weren't even sleeping together!"

He laughed humorlessly. "We hung onto each other with our fingernails because we were desperate to make things work. And now I've got all the time in the world," he continued, spreading his arms expressively, "and she's ready for me to be the attentive, involved, totally present guy she's always deserved and I have no fucking clue how to be that guy."

CJ's face was full of sympathy and a trace of humor as she looked at him. "It's almost like looking in a mirror, except you're so short and Jewish and male."

Josh glared at her. "I'm kinda baring my soul here, Claudia Jean."

She slipped off the porch rail to sit next to him, sliding a comforting arm around his shoulders. "The only reason I can laugh is because I went through all of it," she confided. "The things that make us good at our jobs don't necessarily translate well to making us good at relationships. When I left the White House after the Bartlet years, I was worn down to almost nothing."

"You were in pretty sorry shape," he agreed.

She glared at him. "I seem to recall you being desperate to hire me. Any position I wanted, as I recall."

"It was pity," Josh assured her.

CJ scoffed. "In any case, I ended up having a huge fight with Danny over where our relationship was going, and I admitted to him basically what you just did to me, that I didn't know if our relationship was going to work because I was good at my job and terrible at anything personal. Everything was falling apart back then, do you remember? Toby, and then Leo, and Jed's MS was flaring up so often-"

"I can't believe you call him Jed now."

"I can't believe you still call him sir when Garret and Evie call him Papoo," she countered. "But in any case, Danny told me he didn't care if I was bad at it and it took a long time to get anywhere because he knew I'd get better at it, and he liked me anyway in the meantime."

"We get better," Josh murmured, obviously to himself.

"Yeah," CJ agreed. "Donna loves you for the man you've been for the past seventeen years, not because she's waiting for some new you to suddenly show up and sweep her away. She loves you. Which doesn't mean," she added quickly, "that you shouldn't try and make yourself better for her, because she and your family both deserve more of your time than you've been able to give them in the White House." He nodded at that, unable to deny it. "But don't beat yourself up over the fact that you've been out of office six weeks and are having a hard time adjusting. You'll get there," she promised.

Josh brightened a little at the pep talk, picking up his drink again. "So how did you do it?" he asked. "Getting used to the change of pace, I mean. You must have eventually started sleeping through the night."

"Oh sure," she assured him. "And in the meantime I just introduced him to the pleasures of sleepy middle-of-the-night sex with your insomniac partner."

"CJ!" Josh cried, burying his face in his hands. "Why do you tell me these things?"

She cackled. "Just to see you make that face. And to get you back for telling me that you guys conceived Evie in my old office on Election Night."

"Donna already made me pay for that one!" he protested.

"And notice how I'm absolutely not asking how," she replied placidly, then checked her watch. "Almost dinnertime. We should probably round up the troops before Danny gets back with the pizzas. You wanna go wake Donna up?"

Josh shook his head. "I'll let her rest a little longer. And yeah, I said it after Evie too, but I swear to god, this one really is the last. I know you had Josie older, but the stress is killing me. You guys are going to come out in August and visit, right?"

"Yeah, absolutely," CJ promised. "I want the kids to see DC now before the Republicans get a chance to- wait." She frowned, obviously counting dates in her head. "Oh my god, Josh, you didn't. Not again."

"Not in the office, no," Josh told her with a shit-eating grin. "But we both needed comfort after they called Pennsylvania. Evie and the new one will have almost the same birthday."

"I take it all back, every nice thing I said about you," CJ announced, exasperated. "You are the absolute worst." She rose from her seat and headed for the yard.

"Yeah," Josh agreed cheerfully, climbing to his feet and following, "but I'm getting better."


End file.
